valley sessions: June edits

More of this with Tom and Miriam (and Adam from the Veg Box Cafe hand-drumming on a few tracks): I've edited down the recordings from our June sessions.

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Miriam can be heard cooking on one track that's just me and Tom. And she sings on a few. There might be some nightingales in the background (from the back garden via the open kitchen door), I've not notice them on these tracks though.


We were talking about getting a tiny battery amp for Tom's bass so we can go out on long walks, stop and play at various beautiful spots — an idea which certainly suits me and which could potentially evolve into a new mode of performance (if you want to see the gig, you've got to be prepared to walk five miles — or whatever — because it moves). So, in the middle of a session, Miriam impulsively bought a really sweet little ukelele amp she found online, called a "Honeytone". It's in a cheap Chinese plastic case made to look like 50's vintage design, weighs almost nothing, but has a surprisingly good, suprisingly loud sound, running on a 9v battery. My saz sounds OK, not too metallic (always the problem with running a saz through a cheap amp). Tom's bass has a slight dirty fuzz quality (like listening to garage rock on a little AM radio...this clearly is never going to be in-your-face bass, but it'll do for now). I'm getting one soon, too, so we can start playing outdoors while the weather's still (relatively) good.